Tumblr’s David Karp does not <3 YouTube

Tumblr founder David Karp is, according to an interview he gave to the Guardian, a lover of Twitter and “lukewarm” on Google+. Nor is he impressed with Facebook “as a product”, whatever that means.

But it is for YouTube that he saves his vitriol (emphasis mine):

“The only real tools for expression these days are YouTube, which turns my stomach,” he says. “They take your creative works – your film that you poured hours and hours of energy into – and they put ads on top of it. They make it as gross an experience to watch your film as possible. I’m sure it will contribute to Google’s bottom line; I’m not sure it will inspire any creators.”

No doubt Google would disagree, arguing that a significant chunk of the 60 hours of video uploaded to the site each minute – an increase of 30% in the last three months – contains or inspires some form of originality.

But Karp is unconvinced. YouTube, he says, “was the opportunity to tell every aspiring filmmaker that if they worked really hard and really went for quality they could create great stuff. The stuff YouTube is incentivising is: build a huge subscriber base, put out a lot of videos, do the math and get as big a cheque as possible.”

Google recently did the math and found that YouTube pulls in about 4bn views a day – and has now boosted promotion of its “Partner” programme in a bid to increase the quality of videos. “YouTube offers the opportunity but they sacrifice the tools in such a major way now,” Karp continues. “YouTube is one of the most amazing creative tools in the world and I think it’s gotten a lot worse for creators.” No doubt the point is that Tumblr can close the gap.